Christmas According to Western Traditions

Christmas is the feast of hope, founded upon the birth of the Child-God, accompanied by the birth of the new year. It has rightly been said of it that it is the springtime of the soul, just as we call April the springtime of nature. Nature's spring is easy to grasp, plain and clear; but for a man to feel the springtime of the soul, he needs faith and hope to carry him through the gloom of a long night, past the sight of bare, darkened trees and the whiteness of snow covering the fields... trusting that the year has come round its circle, that the shadows grow less drawn out as they retreat, that the pale winter sun is climbing little by little — and that though the firmament stay dark, within it the soul yearns toward the light and keeps the feast of hope.

If we contemplate the ornament and decoration of Christmas, we find them a symbol of hope and reassurance: like the pine, ever green of leaf, a sign of youth amid the barren white of the snow; and the myrtle and the wild mistletoe, adorning winter's grayness with their red and white berries. The flames of the hearths rise and dance, lending hearts warmth and heat, scattering the glooms of rain and fog. And the merriment and kindliness that fill and flood all hearts at this season of the year are nothing but tokens of man's victory over nature, and of love's over hatred.

A brotherly truce — such is the spirit of Christmas, which steals into personal and family rancors, penetrates into the quarrels at the heart of divergent organizations and parties within a single homeland, and seeps into the disputes that impose their collective injustice among nations which, though they affect solidarity, persist in their old enmities. And yet, from beneath the malice and the wrong, that evergreen feeling shines white — love itself — before which the snows of old grievances melt, and the grudges of hearts shrink away; for there lie hidden, even in the harshest of creatures, aching longings for the sweet trust of childhood. So faith returns, once every year, for a few days, unfurling the banner of love.

Those who keep the feast in France, as in the southern countries of Europe, have made it their custom to distribute gifts on the morning of New Year's Day. But in the Anglo-Saxon and northern countries, in the week before Christmas, the glittering streets are thronged with men and women coming and going, wrapped and muffled, the bitter cold reddening them with its bite, joy carrying them off on its wings; going and coming, laden with heaps of gifts. And how sweet a season it is, when the human creature's selfishness grows too small for him and he yearns to please others — at least once a year — with a sincere and heartfelt pleasing; and often a man spends to excess, beyond what wisdom and good management dictate. But love floats above matter, for generous giving is to man a kind of refuge amid a selfish, utilitarian civilization.

How the Christmas trees delight us! Lights quiver in them from thousands of candles — or, if we fear fire from them, we replace them with little electric lanterns: blue, red, and white. Then the lights disclose the most delicious of sweets: chestnuts glazed with sugar, and walnuts steeped in candied syrup, wrapped in silver leaves. Trees whose branches are laced with shining threads like 'angels' hair,' their recesses dotted with patches of cotton sprinkled with boric acid, like snow upon them; and their trunk watered by a rain of gifts — each gift marked with a name. Among the old customs is that the children set their shoes near the hearth, and in the morning hurry to them early in their nightshirts to find them filled with the gifts of the Christmas man; and upon my life, it is the family's sweetest joy to repeat these simple, sweet rites year after year.

Our modern life has come to stagger under its burdens, until time itself has grown too narrow for us to carry to our loved ones the most sincere of what our hearts hold. There are friends and kinsmen whom busyness has hidden from our sight; and there are the married children of the family, dwelling in far-off towns — and Christmas is nothing if not the ring of their reunion [...]

...the happy one. It is a blessed eve, on which the celebrants make their way to the churches for the midnight service, in the dark and the cold, then return to the traditional supper, for which some countries follow a settled bill of fare: a stuffed goose or a roasted turkey, then a sweet of prunes steeped in wine, and the feast cake in the shape of a hearth log. The snows storm outside and frost blankets the roads, but their desolation is warmed by the lights of the glittering shops, or by the sight of pine boughs hung with frozen drops of water. And within, the chestnuts crackle in the fire, the busy women come and go, everyone is in cheer and gladness, and in the air is the fragrance of the green fir.

No writer has told what Dickens told of the Christmas of the rich and the Christmas of the poor. The two parties meet, inevitably, in his kindly spirit, which breaks down barriers and unites the classes with its sweet ceremonies and its all-embracing joys. And what eloquence in his telling of this season of hospitality and merriment and openness of heart — when the passers-by call out to Scrooge, that fearsome usurer whom years of hardness had made old, once his alarm had quieted and he was overcome, and he cried out in his turn: 'A Merry Christmas!'

And then, how many houses whose members had scattered have gathered them again around the table they knew so long — and at every new meeting there cannot fail to appear heads of hair streaked with white, and faces and fingers over which wrinkles have crept; and perhaps tears choke them for the loss of one who was the flower of the company in years gone by. And yet the old house glows with the offspring of the enchanting ages.

And how sweet are the little hours in which we recapture the mirage of youth's dreams — hours that carry the middle-aged back to the pleasure of their unclouded childhood. And it is the sweetest of pleasures to make others glad. And what a most happy moment, when we watch those dearest to us undoing the knots of string and ribbon from parcels of gifts that hold the utmost of what they crave and desire!

And when we speak of Father Noël, the humane writer André Maurois declares that the part he would most love to play is this role, the role of the distributor of happiness. Should we think him a dull-witted fool, the man who always gives and receives nothing in exchange? No, and no again: true happiness lies in giving — in a smile drawn upon two ailing lips, in warding off wrong from a wretched, deprived man, in wiping a tear from the eyes of a suffering weakling... These are the joys Father Noël breathes upon us. And some American families have gone so far in impersonating the Christmas man in his authentic dress — the red robe, the broad snow-white beard, and the long fur-topped boots — that there was even founded in New York a society by the name of 'Father Christmas Incorporated,' which supplies whoever desires a Father of the Feast, for ten dollars, in his complete costume — and for twenty dollars, if it is stipulated that he come down the chimney from the roof into the house!

In the Middle Ages, when a hope long awaited came true, cries of 'Noël! Noël!' would rise from the crowds — glad tidings of peace and of miracles, and what a surprise it was... 'And how often would I in my turn cry "Noël,"' says Maurois, 'if a friend who had wronged me and turned cold to me were to come in, returning to my house on December 25 to share food and drink with me.' For it was the custom of old that the hearthside gathered in everyone who knocked at the door, even strangers. Today, though 'progress' has dried up the dew of hospitality because of the high cost of living, still Christmas Eve remains a communal night of company and universal merriment.

War itself is sometimes compelled to submit to the peaceable spirit of Christmas: it is told of fighting men that they dared not fight on that wondrous night. And Maurois relates, from his own experience, that he passed one such night crossing the war front alongside the Maginot Line; and there he beheld a scene whose splendor went almost beyond the real, where, through the spreading

snow, every plant and branch was transformed, turned into a beautiful ornament, lent by the phantom of the fog gathering its shadows over the field, as though a Shakespearean fairy had touched it to cast a mysterious mirage over the slopes, making them like the Virgin's Son in the manger; and on the paths, their steps hastened by the cold, he could see English and French soldiers exchanging joyful greetings, amid a miraculous stillness unbroken by a single shot of the guns — as though the god Mars, god of war, had been changed into a quiet prisoner.

What, one wonders, is the meaning of Christmas? What is its deep import? Why was the Child-God laid in a manger, between the cow and the she-ass? As Alain interprets it, saying: just as the new earth awaits an eager plowing and a virgin planting, so the Child bears the message of beginning in his new grace. Therefore prayers rise from the throats of the great, of the Magi, of those of majesty and pomp, humble before the Child-God, entreating him as one entreats hope itself... the worshipful prayer to the weakest of creatures, who has need of the cow, of the she-ass, of Hercules, of Caesar. So Christmas remains among the riddles folded within our souls — if it be not the loveliest of them.

And it is true. If we cast a glance over this world, brute force leaps at first sight to our eyes, until no kind of tyrant is lacking to us, great or small, drawing his power from a retinue or from evil character, thinking that he imposes a law of iron. But what has been, and what has endured, as the strongest of the world's powers? It is this naked Child in his manger, this pauper in his stable — this divine Child who owns neither army nor riches, yet is the resting place of hope and of consolation, because the future is in his possession.

How many a child has the womb cast into a mean hut or a lowly place, where everything around bespeaks gloom and sorrow. But who knows whether this newborn carries, in the unseen of his unknown future, one of the hopes of the sons of men? For the beginning begins with every new being — as with youth, and love, and hope.

And this mother, bending over her newborn in the manger — on her lips indeed is a smile that kindles hope and expectation; the burdens all but crush her, yet she sees in him beauty and perfection. And even so, one glance toward him is enough for her to pour tenderness and affection upon her son, who is her God.

And after her example, and hers again, humanity, weary from its wounds, bends toward the future to come, its heart full of faith, repeating the words of Shelley: 'If winter has come down, can the coming of spring be long?' That is the depth of the meaning of this joyous evening — the meaning of these flocks that bring the streets alive at midnight in their glad clamor, the meaning of these country lanterns whose light blazes upon the snow and in the dark, hastening with their bearers toward the shining temple.

Christmas! When the darkness clears at the dawn-glow of a new hope.